‘Now give us an in/out vote on the UK’, demands Middle England

Buoyed by the opportunity to make a knee-jerk exit from EU membership, voters in England are calling for the right to leave other well-established clubs that they’ve never had much interest in.

With England currently committed to so many little hobbies such as the UK, NATO, the G8 and a loyalty scheme run by Tesco, the tired-looking nation is struggling to find time to watch the news, think rationally or read a paper. “If you ask me, we need to give it all up before we do our homework”, insisted the county of Oxon. “Why sleep-walk into a properly informed decision, when you could just go with the latent xenophobia?”

Surrey and Middlesex admitted they were keen on dropping Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and wondered if they could also distance themselves from Birmingham and the scruffy bits of Guildford. But not every county sees a future in an isolated England. Following a carefully uncontrolled fracking operation along its border with Devon, the newly independent state of Cornwall is now adrift in the Atlantic.

David Cameron has called for calm and promised to keep any debate on membership superficial. “Let’s not concentrate on the detail, but on how much we hate our neighbours”, he soothed. UKIP’s Nigel Farage welcomed the chance to ‘loathe locally’, “there’s always room to be more reactionary and insular”, he suggested. "But it works better from a distance, where you can lose all sense of perspective."

Using a scale model of his New England, Farage explained how he would fire it into space. “Leaving the UK might be enough for the established parties, but it doesn’t go far enough. At UKIP, we’re committed to abandoning the entire continental shelf."

Describing his plans as a ‘first step’ to an exit from the solar system and eventual Full Galaxial independence, Farage scoffed at suggestions his argument didn’t bear close scrutiny. “For too long we’ve skated endlessly around the Sun without really controlling our own destiny. What planet do these jokers think we're on?”

Although not the funniest bit, "Following a carefully uncontrolled fracking operation along its border with Devon, the newly independent state of Cornwall is now adrift in the Atlantic" had me laughing. lovely image

Thanks for the comments but there's something wrong with this, it just doesn't work properly. Not sure what, think there's too many unconnected ideas. If I wasn't lazy, I'd rewrite it with the focus on Farage insisting on a referendum on leaving the continental shelf. If there is one, I only really got my head round oxbow lakes in geography.